


Clever Meals

by orphan_account



Category: AFI
Genre: Depressed Davey, Eating Disorders, M/M, Mental Illness, Sing the Sorrow era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-06
Updated: 2013-01-06
Packaged: 2017-11-23 21:11:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,897
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/626558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>And who I am has benefited from all my cleverly planned meals.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Clever Meals

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this a long time ago. One of the first ED fics I ever wrote. Kind of makes me uncomfortable to think about, but hey, here it is. I don't own them; this never happened.

Davey’s doing that thing again.

Jade lays on the bed, sheets still ruined and bunched together like a landscape being developed, hilly and pockmarked. He watches Davey as unobtrusively as possible, his eyes slyly volleying between the laptop screen and Davey all curled up like a claw at the desk chair. Davey’s not watching him, he’s clicking aimlessly through websites the way men click through television channels, surfing and refusing to commit. His thin digits dance across the keyboard, trigger finger paying special attention to the spacebar. 

There is a glassy quality to Davey’s eyes; it worries Jade. “Dave...” he whispers, hating that this voice sounds strained. Davey doesn’t hear him anyway, he has headphones in his ears and he’s too absorbed in his private mission. In his head Davey is finding the cure to cancer, traversing across unknown territories for the sake of bettering science. He’s accomplishing so much in his head, but Jade knows better. All he’s doing is that thing again. 

Jade stays frozen, still naked and pleasantly aching from being recently fucked. He hasn’t left this spot, really, since then. Davey has of course, he’s gone to the bathroom twice to brush his teeth, he’s raced down the the basement to get a shirt out of the dryer. All the while Jade stays on the bed, used up and flesh cooling and insides torn, all the skin between his legs one raw, nerve. 

“Dave,” He says again, louder this time. Davey snaps his head around to Jade like he just realized he was sitting there, a few stray strands of hair escaping from his lazy, half assed bun. He doesn’t take his headphones out, just stares as Jade with irritation like he got interrupted in his studies, his cancer curing. Jade taps one ear, motioning to the music. Davey sighs, ripping the headphones out. 

“What?” He clips the word at the end, making is less than a syllable.   
“What are you doing?” Jade asks conversationally, trying hard to make his voice sound as casual as possible. If Davey think’s he’s acting suspicious; he’ll get defensive. Davey stares suspiciously at him for a moment, doing that thing. His whole goddamn body vibrating with how forcefully he’s doing it. Jade can see his teeth grinding, eyes bright and distracted. He wants Jade to stop talking to him so he can go back to his mission, his studies, his expedition. Finding the cure. Finding fire and bringing it to the mortals, Prometheus. Victor Frankenstein. 

“Not much...” Davey’s voice is so high and reedy, forced through his teeth like he forgets how to talk. The messy out of control tresses that fall and framed his face quake, vibrate with him. 

“You’re doing that thing,” Jade says quietly, attempting to make himself sound as gentle and unassuming as possible. He waits and watches as Davey stares at him, a flash of quiet elation and complacency darkening his eyes for less than a second before it’s gone. He plays dumb now, shrugging, looking back to his own laptop. 

“What thing?” Davey asks.   
“You’re jiggling your knee,” Jade says like it’s the plainest thing in the world, pointing to where Davey’s bare foot is jerking against the ground, bouncing. Jade is forced to think of the Survival Research Laboratories, where some crazy scientists hooked up a dead rabbit to a series of electrical volts and mechanics so the corpse could hop around like it was alive, until it decomposed on the pistons and bolts and rods. The Rabot, they called it. Davey’s foot is like the Rabot. It’s not just a nervous tic. It has intention; it’s the the discovery of the arctic, Frankenstein’s creation, the cure to cancer. Survival Research. 

“So, sue me,” Davey fires back, shrugging. “I was bored.”   
Jade’s mouth opens and closes silently for a second, eyes drifting from Davey’s obsessive knee-jiggling to the opened box of crackers on the desk, to Davey’s secret torso hidden in all the fabric of his shirt. Jade feels himself falling to pieces like th dead flesh of a rabbit hooked up to a machine. He’s losing to Davey’s logic, knowing he’s not going to win this one. 

“I love you,” Jade says gently to Davey, thinking that it’s the only phrase that explains why he notices when Davey’s doing that thing again, why he cares, why he pushes. He waits for Davey to answer back automatically, “I love you too,” but his headphones are back in and he doesn’t hear Jade, his knee back to bouncing on the carpet, fingers back to caressing the spacebar. 

Jade looks at Davey for a long time, at the private smiles, the bright eyes, the cracker box, the fleeting glimpse of accomplishment that skitters across his mouth as he glances down at his leg like its hysterical two-beat motion could cure cancer. 

~*~

Davey wishes Jade would stop trying. 

He’s doing a good job right now, pretending to look at something online while he bounces his foot forcefully. Davey feels like he’s failing if he isn’t moving in some way, especially after eating a serving and a half of crackers and a handful of jellybeans. He knows that jiggling ones knee doesn’t burn calories like sex or working out, but he’s already done one of those today and he won’t go to the gym until after dinner when he really needs it, so this has to do until then. Davey gets tired every once and awhile and stops the frantic motion, letting the sole of his foot rest on the carpet for a beat or two, his body buzzing with a warm, live electricity in his spine. 

Jade is concerned; Davey can tell by the scared look in his eye when he talks to him. Davey knows that Jade doesn’t really understand this, in fact his knowledge on the subject is limited to what Davey has told him in those strange, lazy and wet-to-the-touch moments when Davey has passed out, worked himself too hard, or gone to many hours foodless. 

There have been times when Davey has made himself too weak to keep his head up and had to loll around on the floor, laughing hysterically with how proud of himself he is. These would be happy memories save for the image of Jade, towering over Davey’s body with terror written across his face, hair whorled from raking his hands through it, mouth warped around the molasses slow words of “Dave, Dave stop. What’s wrong? Talk to me. Dave. Dave. Dave.” His name over and over again because Davey understands that Jade doesn’t recognize him, and needs to hold onto the word that’s common to the man coughing and hiccup-laugh-crying on the floor and the man Jade fell in love with four years ago. 

It’s times like those that blow Davey’s careful, clever cover. There’s no explaining away why you can’t stand, there’s no explaining away the leftovers in the trash can you lied about, there’s no explaining away the manager of 24 Hour Fitness calling your home on a Tuesday night to discuss that you’ve passed out again and hit your head on one of the machines. Those things don’t get explained away, no matter how careful or clever Davey claims to be, so Jade knows a lot of it. He knows what Davey’s been forced to tell him, he knows in theory what Davey does to himself. He knows the signs, he can tell when it’s a good day or a bad day. 

It’s a very bad day, and Davey must have been doing a poor job with his careful, clever cover because Jade calls him on it. 

That, or Jade just really loves him and can tell when things aren’t right with Davey’s head. Davey doesn’t want to give Jade that much credit though. Davey doesn’t want to believe Jade loves him that much, because if he does then Davey owes it to him to talk about this, and if Davey wants anything in the world, it’s to not talk about this. 

Drawing the facts from Davey’s body is a painstaking process, and Davey knows this. It’s like extracting shards of glass from flesh, invisible translucency buried in blood. When Jade’s trying to persuade Davey to talk to him, it’s as excruciating and tedious as removing ticks. If you don’t go deep enough, the head remains latched into the skin sucking blood, and then the little fucker regrows a new body. Davey hates ticks. Jade probably does, too. Davey doesn’t want to force Jade to remove all his ticks and dig all the broken glass out of his body. 

It is exhausting. Not to mention Jade doesn’t understand. It isn’t his fault; he just isn’t wired the same way, plus he’s built naturally thinner. He doesn’t have to worry about the same things Davey does. When Davey tries to explain as honestly as possible, it tears Jade apart, makes him sit with his head in his hands and cry because he doesn’t understand and he doesn’t know what to do. 

All of Davey’s other problems are Jade’s problems too, and they both mutually understand what is fucked up about the other one but this...? It is beyond Jade’s realm of capability, beyond his knowledge and competence, and no matter how hard he tries, it always ends the same way. He’ll find the tick and start digging, dismantling it’s fleshy, sick looking body until Davey’s blood erupts from it and stains his finger tips crimson.

The teeth stay imbedded, however, digging into Davey’s soft spots while Jade rinses his hands, and pretty soon that tick grows a new body and keeps suckling. As Davey shifts, the fragments of glass grind together, itchy and tired, and Jade keeps staring at his bouncing leg long after Davey dismisses the issue, letting the heads bite, feed, and regrow new bodies. 

~*~

Davey’s doing that thing again. 

Jade is in complete isolation with this one. If anybody saw them right now, not one person would assume there was anything other than the obvious wrong with Davey. They’re sitting at the kitchen table, cast in a grey light from an open window, a dreary day. Davey and Jade both have plates of food in front of them. Davey’s is carrying as much as Jade’s, no less, maybe even a little more if you ask Davey about it. Nothing to suggest this is a careful, clever meal. 

No, if Jade asked a friend if they thought Davey had a problem, they would look at these two pates of food and tell Jade he was crazy. He loves Davey too much, he needs to read less into things. 

Jade knows better. 

It’s something nuanced, something only he would see because he knows every little thing about Davey; he’s made it his job as an artist to make Davey his great life’s work and study him. He doesn’t know how to breathe without understanding everything about Davey, and that’s why he’s choking, why he’s been drowning ever since he made a deduction based in these tiny signs; these clever, careful smiles.

He can tell by the way Davey’s eyes are set hard and dark and locked in on some little imperfection in the tabletop. Anyone else would just say he’s distracted, in his head, depressed, being Davey...but no, there’s a plan behind it. There’s the cure for cancer in the next experiment, there’s the light he’s been looking to bestow upon the mortals past the next outcropping of tundra and stone. Jade can tell by the shape of Davey’s mouth, distaste curling it ever so slightly, the cupid’s bow of his upper lip pulled a little tighter than usual. 

But most of all Jade can tell from the way Davey is eating. When this first came to Jade’s attention, he rented a few of those documentaries, all of which featured lots of stick thin girls he couldn’t see a shred of Davey in. They all cried when they were forced to eat, sobbing and spitting it up and becoming otherwise hysterical as they all failed their personal test. Chew, spit, sob. Davey had done that a few times, only one or two of which Jade had actually witnessed, but the over all behavior seemed different for Davey. Those girls cut their food into tiny, nearly miniscule pieces, these little shreds of nothing they could swallow and mull around in their mouths until they dissolve like a cow chewing its cud. It takes them forever to finish a meal, but for Davey it’s the opposite. 

He takes big bites and forgets to chew, inhaling the mouthfuls. Chew, swallow, a new one before that one was even down. To anyone else Davey probably looks really hungry, but Jade can tell this is just another way to get through something. Davey eats like he doesn’t realize he’s eating, tries not to dwell on it and get it done as quickly as possible to he can go back to jiggling his leg, running on the treadmill, or fucking Jade hard until his body is slick with sweat and Jade can feel Davey’s heart pounding itself sick against Jade’s own chest.

Davey told Jade once that he had to think of eating as fueling a machine, and that’s what it looks like when he does it. Shoveling forkful after forkful into his mouth, eyes fixed blank an determined on the table top. Just waiting until he can be moving again. Jade watches him, sits stonily to his left trying to enjoy his own food while Davey treats his like coal to throw into the boiler, a ship cutting through icy seas. 

 

It kills Jade to know that Davey fucks him half the time to exhaust himself and get his heart rate up. It kills Jade to know that he allows him to do this. He takes it, lets Davey use him as an outlet for his problem, a receptacle he can deposit his seed and his desperate craving to work his body too hard. Jade remembers one of the rare times they talked about this, the day after Davey collapsed in the living room and got the wind knocked out of him, laying sprawled half on the couch half on the coffee table laughing hysterically between huge scared glassy tears leaking down his cheeks. Between telling Jade that his hands were numb, that he couldn’t see clearly, that he didn’t need an ambulance. 

When they talk about it after the fact, Jade remembers Davey telling him, “sex helps,” in a weak voice, his head resting on Jade’s chest, his breath labored.   
“Why?”  
“Because it makes me feel good about my body,” Davey had said, sincere sounding. 

Jade used to interpret this as a positive. It meant he could tell Davey he was beautiful, kiss him,repeat over and over again that he was fucking perfect everywhere and didn’t need to change. He didn’t need to lose weight and gain muscle mass. Now Jade knows better. Jade knows it’s not about getting his ego stroked, it’s not about whether or not Jade thinks he’s perfect. It’s about moving, about burning calories and breaking a sweat. 

Jade supposes he’s an enabler in that sense then, because any time Davey takes him so rough they’re both sweating and worked hard and sore the next morning, Jade lets it happen. He fucking craves it happening, not just because he loves it when Davey takes him, but because he feels like it’s the only thing he can do to help in this situation. He doesn’t understand a lot of what Davey tells him about this, but he understands, “this helps” and he’s willing to set aside the possibility he’s being used if it helps. He’ll do anything really, to fix this. 

~*~

Davey loves food, but he hates eating. Davey hates working out, but he loves the way he feels afterwards. 

It’s a very complex game. It’s so complex it doesn’t have a name. Davey does not have an eating disorder. That would require him to starve himself or make himself throw up, and he does neither of those things. He doesn’t even diet, or limit the amount he eats. He works himself too hard at the gym, sure, but so do Olympic athletes. No, Davey’s not even sure he really has a problem. 

Jade seems to think so. He says, “The only reason you eat is because I won’t let you get away with not eating,” begging Davey silently with those sad eyes. Davey wishes he could agree, he wishes that it was that easy. He usually remains carefully, cleverly silent when Jade uses this tired old argument on him, but he knows the shameful truth. 

The truth is that even if Jade wasn’t with him, and didn’t love him, and it didn’t hurt him when Davey tried to go a day without eating; Davey would still not have an eating disorder. Davey has determined on multiple occasions that he is not actually strong enough to not eat. And that’s even worse than having a eating disorder...wishing you could, wishing you could go another twenty minutes on the treadmill, go another hour and a half with an empty stomach...but giving in. Taking that water break, eating that apple. Davey is so motherfucking weak that he is the only thing keeping himself from having a real problem. 

Davey is careful and clever enough that he could hide a real problem from Jade. But Davey is not strong enough. Therein lies the actual issue. 

It is hard not to hate yourself when you can’t even be fucked up right. So Davey eats. Not because he doesn’t want to hurt Jade, not because he’s made some kind of promise. But because he’s hungry, and likes to do it. He remembers with shame the time he went downstairs and told Jade he was going to have breakfast. Instead of having breakfast, he had five bites maybe of some left overs and threw the rest away, the weight of it making a satisfied thunk in the trashcan, a surge of pride and accomplishment. Later that night when Davey still hadn’t eaten and instead got too lightheaded to do anything but loll around the bed bonelessly...after that....he lied to Jade, told him he hadn’t had any breakfast at all, disregarding those five bites. That is how pathetic Davey is. He needs to embellish his abstinence from the things he loves, to the person he loves, to seek approval when the only one who won’t give it to him is himself. And he certainly doesn’t love that mess. 

Davey hangs his head, carrying his plate to scrape the leftovers into the trashcan. He can feel Jade’s eyes on him, boring sorrowful holes into his entirely average-sized frame. Before Jade says it, Davey knows what he’s going to say. 

“You need to eat more,” He says quietly, like he’s scared Davey might react badly. 

“Don’t worry.” Davey tells him without looking up. There are a million more important things coursing instinctually through his head right now in response to that, things like You ate just as much. Your meal was just as small. Smaller, even. But the thought that overrides all of these is, you don’t understand. 

Jade doesn’t need to worry because of course he will eat. He doesn’t starve himself. He doesn’t have a problem. He would eat even if Jade didn’t tell him to, if Jade didn’t even exits. Because Davey loves food. 

~*~

Davey’s doing that thing again. 

Jade’s hands are on him, pressed to his chest, thumbs remembering the hard, hidden slide of skin over his collarbones. They rise and fall with the gentle movement of Davey’s breath, but there is a careful, clever calculation underneath those affected inhalations. Jade can tell Davey’s eyes are black and bright with excitement, with desperation, with the fight, the hunt, the expedition, the cure for fucking cancer; he’s almost there. He’s almost brought fire to the mortals. 

There’s a strange, strung out and coked up feel to Davey when he’s doing that thing. It’s like an elastic sheet pulled around a mattress a little bit too big, taut and stiff. Cats’ guts too tight for a violin, tucked safe and wailing under Jade’s chin. He vibrates with energy, his skin radiating a sweat sheen of terror, accomplishment. 

If he wasn’t standing, quiet and patient while Jade touches his chest with careful, clever palms, his foot would be bouncing like mad right now, and Jade knows that. 

“Are you going to fuck me?” Jade asks, tremor on his lips that could be easily mistaken for lust, just like Davey’s black eyes and pounding heart could easily be mistaken for the same thing. Anticipation for Jade’s flesh, not for exertion. 

“So hard,” Davey purrs, hands sliding up Jade’s neck to cup his skull, tongue flitting out frantically to wet his lips. He’s a good actor; Jade almost believes he wants him and not what he makes him feel. Jade’s heart is aching, he knows Davey wants to throw him down on the bed and use his body, come quick and hard inside Jade, sobbing against his shoulder under a guise of pleasure. He wants to get into this fast, lose himself in the only kind of working out he doesn’t secretly hate. He wants Jade to tell him he’s beautiful, he’s perfect, because even though he doesn’t believe a word of that and he has a lot of work to do, it’s nice to know Jade believes it. 

Davey doesn’t think Jade understands these things, but he does. He loves Davey, and when you love someone you can taste his pain and his problems when he kisses you.   
Jade can taste it, black and bitter like Davey’s eyes, his spit poisoned by all those careful, clever meals. He can feel Davey trembling under his touch, needing so badly to keep moving. 

Jade kisses him deep and hard, tongue searching and bruising and trying to tell him all of the things Davey won’t believe if he uses his voice. Jade wishes he could fold Davey into his body, stop him for a few seconds and swallow him. Jade wishes it was enough that he loves Davey, that he thinks his body is the most fucking perfect thing he’s ever seen, not too big or small or anything. Perfect. He wants to fix it, fix this Davey who hates himself so much it doesn’t matter whether or not Jade loves him, break him down and build him back up into something a mirror will reflect the right way. 

But Davey doesn’t have time for that, he’s too busy pushing Jade down on his back and covering him with his body, flush and hot and hard, pushing his hands through Jade’s hair over and over again saying “sorry, sorry” through his tears, pushing his legs up so they can hook behind his neck. 

“Sorry for what?” Jade gasps, two slick fingers pushing themselves into him, feeling deceitfully good, goosebumps breaking out across Jade’s stomach. But Davey just shakes his head and smiles sadly, long black hair curling against his shoulders, rocking in motion with his torso. “Nevermind,” he purrs as he dips down to press his mouth open against Jade’s throat. “You don’t understand.” 

But Jade does understand. Davey is just too careful and clever to let him.


End file.
